time, you fickle thing
by Lady September
Summary: Damon and Caroline finally figure some things out. damon/caroline, stefan/elena, salvatores/happiness.


**notes: **Wow, I finished something. I've actually had the first three scenes typed up for about a month, but real life (spending a week in the US, researching school, _visiting _said school) got in the way. Anyway, it's done now. I hope you like it. As always, you can find me at tumblr.

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**time, you fickle thing**

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When Elena picks Stefan _again_, he thinks of reality checks and hitting the ground hard.

It's not unexpected, of course not, he's not _stupid_, what with the pining looks and the late-night phone calls and his track record and, "Well, crazy or not, that kind of love never dies," ringing in his ears. Honestly, he thinks as his brother awkwardly hovers behind the doppelganger when she explains what's going on and how she'll always love him but _not like that_, they should give him a little more credit.

"Story of my life," he shrugs, downs his scotch.

The stricken expression on her face doesn't hurt nearly as much as the guilt on his brother's, and really, that's all the confirmation he needs.

—

There's twisted pleasure in leaving Mystic Falls behind again. It's his hometown but _fuck_, he hates it with everything in him. There are too many and not enough memories there—too many things that should've gone right but wouldn't because it happened to be him who asked.

Life on the road is easy, carefree. Different.

He cuts the hero hairdo (and gets real haircuts actively while he's at it, because he likes to be literal), parties and drinks and _lives _in a way he's not been allowed when playing house with the Scooby Gang. He wrecks a little havoc. He trashes a couple of bars. He woos girls, and makes sure they're the complete opposite of a certain Gilbert—light colors and guiltless eyes. He tries to forget. There are no Originals, no brother, no doppelgangers to screw things up for him.

Damon keeps moving, keeps going. He can't seem to find any peace but tells himself that's not what he's looking for. He doesn't _want _peace.

For quite some time he tries to get back into his old mindset, but his heart doesn't seem to be completely in it anymore. His _heart_—since when does he have a fucking heart? He's not entirely sure when that happened, when things changed. He can't find the switch. Maybe his is fried, too. Maybe that's what doppelgangers do, when they're not busy stabbing people in the back and choosing between brothers.

And yes, he thinks, he's earned the right to be bitter.

Days become weeks become months, and he doesn't keep count.

He changes cities—not to mention countries—whenever he feels like it, sticks to the bigger ones because it's easier to lose yourself in crowds. Day and night blur together, in and out of dingy clubs and fancy restaurants and girls' apartments, compelling his way when charm doesn't work. (But he feels _bad _about it.) Tries to shrug the guilt off, forces smiles. Nothing's wrong, of course not, nothing's changed. He's the same he's always been, searching, always searching.

"What are you looking for?" the girl on his arm asks, her voice catching in the wind and her eyes impossibly blue. She's pretty but, up until this very moment, just another face to him. "What is it you're searching for, Damon Salvatore?"

Acting on impulse he raises his arm, leads her into a spin. She lets out a startled laugh as she twirls around once. Her face is flushed in the cold wind, white scarf a contrast against her skin, blood pumping thickly under her skin.

Damon leans in, tells her a secret: "I don't know."

(Maybe he doesn't want to find his switch, he thinks that night after he lets the girl on his arm stumble back to the safety of her home, stars heavy above them, mind muddled with alcohol. Maybe he doesn't look hard enough on purpose.)

He can do the selfless thing, too. He can step back if that's what they want.

It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, that he doesn't look at slim brunettes and think _what if_—what if things worked out differently, what if he was different. He _did _love Elena, even if he didn't do it right. He'll love Elena in the future, too, but it'll be a different kind of love. It'll change into something softer, if not less fierce, the love for a sister. He'll make sure of it, because he won't let them go forever.

But for a moment he just wants to hold onto that intensity.

The anger, the disappointment, the guilt—for once, he doesn't push it back and pretend it doesn't matter. He lets it play out the way it's supposed to, in a slightly less explosive way than he's known for.

So after the initial whirlwind rush of power, he keeps to himself. It's unusual and uncomfortable, because he's never been very good at being alone, but this time at least it's his own choice. He stops burying his grief, starts to think instead. Doesn't keep a journal, for fuck's sake, that's Stefan's thing, but thinks nonetheless. Thinks about Katherine, about Elena, about Alaric. Thinks about everything he's done and tries not to lie to himself. Struggles sometimes, yes, but slowly pulls himself apart in order to put himself back together later. He's watched his brother do the same thing countless times over, hopes it's worth it.

(The first night he screams, cries, rages.

But he doesn't hurt anyone. And, maybe more importantly, he doesn't hurt himself.)

When things become less difficult, when rage isn't simmering beneath the surface at all times anymore, he makes contact with the world again. He runs into Caroline, by accident, in Amsterdam of all places. She's there nurturing a broken heart—although from the death of Tyler or the death of _Klaus_, he doesn't know—and he spends a couple of days watching, stalking. It's the rush he's after, the knowledge that he's still powerful. She doesn't notice him. She's caught up in heartbreak and hunting (but she never kills anyone, he's noticed) and forever at her fingertips, and soon it's not enough to just _look_.

—

"Are you going to kill me?" is, ridiculously, the first thing she says.

He tilts his head to the side, takes a step forward. She doesn't cower back but there's weariness in her eyes that he doesn't like. He lifts his hand in a smooth motion and wipes the remaining blood off the corner of her lip with his thumb. Then he snorts and says, "Don't be stupid," because he's Damon Salvatore and he doesn't do gentle.

She steps away from his hand, face settling for vague confusion as she looks at him. It's gnawing at her—the fact that neither of them has changed outwardly, not even a little, and now they're standing here like no time has passed at all.

"Well," she finally says, "if you're not going to kill me, then you should join me for a drink."

So he does, and it's as easy as that.

Her apartment is small and not very personal, nothing luxurious either like what he's gotten used to, but she seems to like it well enough. They sit in the living room, starts with glasses but eventually abandons them to just pass the bottle of wine back and forth between them. He's spread out on the couch, one arm behind his head and his legs crossed. She sits on the floor, back against the table, head tilted back slightly as she looks at him. It's been years, and there's a lot of history between the two of them. Survivors of Mystic Falls, they are, which they should be proud of, but thinking about those years really only awaken memories that are better left forgotten.

Finding things to talk about isn't hard. Light banter has always been his forte (he remembers being able to put people to ease with a couple of words and a smile even back when he was human), and Caroline isn't exactly known to run out of things to say.

When they finally fall silent, it's companionable more than anything else.

Caroline shifts, stretches her back a little. She seems to think of something, and then, before he can ask, she goes ahead and says it. "Hey, I'm sorry about Elena." She's not really—she always rooted for Stefan, he knows—but he guesses she thinks it's the right thing to say. "That sucks."

He breathes out sharply, a laugh without a body. "You didn't seem to care much about me back in the day."

"You never seemed to care about me at all," Caroline shoots back.

"Touché," he says after a while, raises the bottle at her before tipping it back and swallowing. He can't really blame her for it, he thinks, because of the sole reason that he's always been a dick to her. "I should probably go, what with it getting late—early?—and all."

"You know," she says with a shrug of her shoulders. "You could stay."

He hums under his breath, considers it, knows she's only asking because she's lonely. He _doesn't _miss his brother or Mystic Falls. He definitely hasn't missed Caroline. (Or so he tells himself.) "Fine," he agrees in a drawl. "I'm bored anyway. Need some entertainment."

—

They don't fall into bed immediately, even if the thought certainly crosses his mind. Caroline's beautiful and familiar. Damon's lonely.

But Caroline rolls her eyes, holds up a perfectly manicured hand and says, "Yeah, I don't think so," when he tries his moves on her. He does it purely out of curiosity and boredom, of course. "You know, I try not to sleep with guys who don't love me."

He raises an eyebrow. "Must've been a while for you, then," and maybe the meaning behind those words are a little harsher than he intends.

Her face twists into a reminiscent sad expression for a moment, a brief second, and then she laughs and hits him hard on the shoulder.

So they fall into something else instead, kind of stumble into it, because being vampires doesn't matter when it comes to this. He's not even entirely sure what _this_is, and sometimes that bothers him. It's Caroline, he reasons at times. She's a pretty face, fun to hang out with, but at the end of the day it's Caroline and he's never had any trouble walking away from her.

But it's also _Caroline_, which means that she has no qualms about carving herself a place in his life.

He waits for her outside the bar where she works, leans against the wall with sunglasses on and his hands in his pockets. She doesn't mind kicking his leftovers out of the apartment, all flare and stern judgment, almost better at it than him. He goes shopping with her, she goes hunting with him, and they lie on the couch nestled closely together and watch Phineas and Ferb—

("The best kids' show ever," Caroline proclaims, a carton of Ben and Jerry's in her hands. She waves the spoon around to make a point and he tries to ignore the ice cream that drips down onto the couch. "I mean, they _still _show reruns of it. That's gotta count for something!"

"It's a _kids' _show," he says with a shake of his head, but mostly just to rile her up.

"Pfft," she scoffs. "What do you know?"

And he doesn't watch her lick the ice cream off the spoon, not at all.)

—in the afternoon sun because there's nothing better to do, because there's nothing else except for here, now, when it comes to the two of them. They decide on a whim that it'll always be like this. They know promises like that don't last, but with warmth in their bodies and the sound of birds chirping outside they can't bring themselves to care.

—

She doesn't want forever, she tells him. She doesn't know what to do with it.

It's a word carelessly thrown around. People say forever without pausing to think what it means. Damon wonders if they understand the implications of it, but maybe he shouldn't expect that of them. They have no concept of what it means because most of them don't have the option of it. He literally has forever in front of him—until the sun goes out, until _all _suns go out—if he wants it, if he's careful enough. And even if that won't be a problem because he's anything but careful, everyone knows that, the sheer possibility is terrifying.

He tells her to stop thinking about it like that, the way she does. There's no reason to worry about things that haven't happened yet, about futures intertwined.

Sometimes she listens.

This Caroline is different from the Caroline he remembers at the end, nothing like Caroline in the beginning—maybe more like Caroline-in-the-middle, bright eyes, quick to laughter. She's filled out again, isn't just skin and bones, barely hanging on: she's strength and sunlight, survival bundled up in one person. He wants to cling to it, soak it up. Save some for himself.

"Come on, Caroline-bright-eyes," he says, a smile curling in the corners of his mouth. "Where to next?"

—

"Why did you run, Caroline?"

It's something he's thought about a lot, because she's not really the person to run. Then again, he's not either, and he can still feel the urge simmering in him at this sudden turn his life has taken. He imagines it was out of guilt, regret maybe. Fear that they'd come after her. He doesn't understand it, the thing that developed between her and Klaus, like he wasn't their enemy, like he didn't try to kill her best friends and even Caroline herself at least a couple of times.

She shifts uncomfortably, a little tense. She doesn't like this conversation. "I don't know," she says, shrugs. Adds, "I was just tired," and he wonders if that's as close to the truth as he'll ever get.

"Tired of what?" he tries anyway.

"No one lining up for me." Her voice is muffled, but he catches the words anyway. He doesn't understand because _everyone _was lining up for her, weren't they? Maybe not like with Elena, but certainly Tyler was. Maybe Klaus, sometimes. Speaking of which, she continues, "He offered me the world, you know. Said small-town-boy, small-town-life wouldn't be enough for me."

Damon doesn't know what to say to that—it's true, after all, is what drew him to her to begin with, all that sparkling potential hiding behind a neurotic cheerleader—so he nods slowly, asks instead. He's been working on that lately.

"So who would you have picked, hmm? We all know how Elena's story ended. How would've Caroline Forbes'?"

She finally twists around so that she can look at him. He can see something flicker and build in her eyes, an answer that he's not prepared for, not ready for yet. Forever is a very dangerous slippery slope. Maybe she can read the turmoil on his face, because she gently turns away from him again. She sighs, in a way that means she'll let it go, she's ready to move on after this, and he should be too.

"I guess we'll never know."

He breaks the uncomfortable silence that follows by slamming his hands down hard against the wood, gets the pleasure of seeing her startle, and then continues to drum out some sort of melody against the table with a smug smile like that's what he was after the whole time while she berates him for making her jump.

—

When they _do _fall into bed, it's not earth-shattering at all.

He doesn't hit the ground hard with the impact of it, there's no urge to destroy, he doesn't feel like clawing out his own heart (and that's the way Damon used to love, all passion and force, taking because compromise isn't something Katherine groomed him for). It's been a long time in the making, has built slowly and patiently without their knowledge.

"Why Elena?" Caroline asks.

"I don't know," he sighs, but there's no pain at the name anymore and that's progress, it is. "She… she just tried to understand, I guess."

Caroline's quiet for a very long time, the sound of bad commercials loud in the silence between them, strangeness in her eyes as she looks at him. Finally, she shakes her head and breathes out. "I tried to do that, too, you know," she says, pulls her feet from his lap and sits up straighter.

His heart drops in his chest and he looks at her, really looks. Caroline-bright-eyes, weary, but young, _alive_. "I know," he replies quietly. "I'm sorry, Caroline," he finds himself saying then, words tumbling out of his mouth in a rush. He thinks maybe he should've done this earlier. Caroline can't forgive him for all his sins, and he doesn't want her to, but maybe he can give her this. "I really am for dragging you into this. For… everything I did to you. It wasn't right."

He _means _it.

"Thank you," she says simply. "That's all I needed to hear."

They meet halfway.

(And he tells himself it's not like coming home, but it kind of is.)

—

Stefan and Elena own a very nice little house in Rio. They're tanned, relaxed in a way he's never seen them before, and seemingly has no idea that he's taken up residence not far away by the looks on their faces when he suddenly stands outside their door.

His brother jumps, Elena shrieks, and Damon shakes his head.

"Honestly," he says with a drawl, "what kind of half-assed vampires are you?"

There's hugging and hand-clasping involved in the greeting and a lot of intense looks when they think the others aren't looking to try and get a read on the situation, on where they stand with each other. Damon thinks it's okay to let it slip, bites back the sour words on his tongue. He's let it go somewhere along the way, even if he can't remember when or where. There's something else weighing him down now.

The rock on Elena's hand makes Damon whistle while Stefan nervously shuffles his feet and tries to hide his smile.

"Not married yet, then?" Damon asks. "Figured you'd be by now."

"We—" Stefan pauses, shakes his head. "Well, _I _want you to be there." The change of words isn't because Elena doesn't, or because Elena's hesitant, but deliberate because he needs his brother and it's a tentative attempt to see if they can repair whatever happened between them.

It's also very honest. Damon hums under his breath, but doesn't say anything.

Elena throws her arms around him again, hugs him tightly, fusses and chatters and berates. "You should've called!" she exclaims. "We haven't been grocery shopping in forever—and you're totally staying for dinner, don't even say you're not—so we barely have anything home. Stefan, we have to—"

She continues to talk right over his, "It's fine, Elena, don't worry."

"Elena," Stefan says calmly, steps between them and places a gentle hand on her arm that seems to bring her back to herself, anchors her easily. "There's enough spaghetti left from yesterday to feed a small army. I'm sure that'll do."

Apparently she's thrown herself into what she thinks is the role of a good girlfriend/hostess with gusto.

"She hasn't really taken well to being a vampire," Stefan explains in hushed tones when she runs water in the kitchen, the guilt still fresh in his eyes after all this time. "So we've been keeping busy. It helps."

Damon nods, remembers.

They eat outside while the sky grows darker, chats and laughs and catches up on the long years they've been apart. The food's good ("You should've been there for that class, Damon, you would've loved it," Elena says, "the teacher was _amazing_!"), the company better. It goes surprisingly well, not nearly as bad as he expected, and he wonders why it took them so long to get to this.

When Elena goes back inside to get them another bottle of wine, he turns to his brother and manages to not completely screw up the conversation he came here to have.

"Caroline," Stefan muses out loud, ends it with a chuckle.

"Caroline," Damon echoes.

"Who would've thought?"

He shakes his head, and then suddenly it's in his hands and he's tired. The years weigh on him. What he's done doesn't weigh as heavily, because they're _vampires_, but he doesn't like the way it makes him think now.

Stefan's hand is soft against his skin, a memory. "You need _time_," he says, hesitates: "You _have _time, brother."

Damon looks at him, remembers sun-kissed skin and bloodied kneecaps, the stiff material of clothes against consoling fingertips, and thinks, _how did I let this happen? _And then he nods. Something shifts between them, maybe finally falls into place. Stefan smiles, wry amusement on his face. Damon snorts, and pushes his hand away. They laugh at their stupidity. They're family, after all.

Elena pretends like she hasn't been listening when she wanders past them, pauses briefly only to put the new bottle of fine wine down on the table before she makes her way out into the grass barefoot. They watch her quietly, let her do what she wants.

She twirls a couple of times, hands outstretched, face open and honest at the stars. She laughs; the picture of happiness.

Stefan leaves his seat, then, forgoes everything else for this: his eyes trained solely on her, always, always, drawn towards her. There's an inevitability to it that is breathtaking to witness.

Her head drops and she looks at him, takes two steps back as if she's not ready to slow down yet but he follows. She lets him reach out, persistent and he doesn't give up, never has, fingers curling in her shirt as he pulls her to him, steadies her, kisses her.

Damon watches. There's a forgotten smile on his lips.

Then he leaves them to their moment, steals the bottle of wine and walks away for now, the rightness of it all tight in his chest.

—

"So maybe," he says, starts, hovers in the doorway. Shakes his head, clenches his hands, tries again. "Say maybe _I'm _lining up?"

Caroline smiles, a thing made of fairytales and sun.

"We have all the time in the world."

They will never grow up, but that's okay. No one ever really does.

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**end note: **I've been working on this for so long that I don't have the energy to check it for leftover mistakes, so please excuse any grammatical errors. Also, OOC-ness. Damon is a very hard character to write when he's the focus of the story, not just making snappy dialogue in the background, so I felt a little out of my depth at some points. I'd appreciate if you left your thoughts in a review. Thanks.


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